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You might say it’s the double-digit temperatures or the robins bobbing around your front lawn, but for me the surest sign of spring is an invitation to wheel cars around in parking lots close to home.

That’s how I found myself in the driver’s seat of a Kia Sorento fitted with Michelin Premier LTX tires worn down to 4/32nds of an inch, hurtling toward an unprotected human being at full throttle.

More on that in a minute.

You’ve likely seen the TV ads for Michelin’s Premier tires by now. “Safe when new, safe when worn,” the tagline goes.

The new Michelin Premier LTX line adds SUVs, CUVs and lights truck fitments to the product line, on sale June 1. Dealers are just beginning to place orders, and the manufacturer’s suggested retail price will range from $229 to $470.

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The Premier A/S was the first series, designed for cars and minivans, and went on sale last year. The MSRP for those ranges from $176 to $346.

Jim Kenzie is at the wheel of a Kia Sorento in testing the new Michelin Premier LTX tire in a parking lot at Woodbine Raceway. (Stephanie Wallcraft / for the toronto star)

With Premier, Michelin set out to design a tire that would retain peak performance in wet weather conditions throughout its usable life.

Two different factors contribute to this: the rubber compound itself, and grooves on the tires that either expand or emerge depending on their position, keeping water wicking consistent at all levels of tread wear.

The rubber compound incorporates high amounts of silica and sunflower oil. The silica provides bonding strength to keep the treads on the road, and the sunflower oil increases grip on wet roads at lower temperatures.

But those grooves are the key. When viewing a cutaway of a new tire, the central rain grooves have a tapered look, thinner at the top and wider at the base. This changes the width of the grooves as the tread wears to allow similar amounts of water to be wicked away at each stage of the tire’s lifespan.

While those central grooves are widening, new grooves appear on the sides that are hidden beneath tread when the tire is new — keeping the right amount of water moving away for the thickness of the tread so the rubber can stay in contact with the road.

This is all well and good on paper, but the only true test is trying it out.

So we return to that brave soul who stood at the end of a long straightaway, not wearing so much as knee pads, with complete faith that the nearly-so-worn-as-to-be-illegal tires I was riding on were going to stop me before I hit him.

(He wasn’t standing there for no reason. He was simulating an obstacle on the road by pretending to be a moose.)

And you know what? He was right to believe. The tires made good on their promises.

I drove two Sorentos that day, identical except one was wearing a brand new set of Premier LTX tires and the other housed a set that had been mechanically worn to within 1/16” of its life.

I took both cars through a course of hard braking on both dry and wet pavement plus slalom turns and a moderate-speed wet driving course.

The differences between the two were nearly indiscernible — that being the point.

CHANGE THOSE WINTER TIRES

People talk about how important it is to put winter tires on in frigid Canadian climes, but it’s equally important to remember to take those tires off when the temperature creeps back upward.

Winter tires are designed for increased grip in snow and in colder temperatures —7 degrees Celsius or lower. when the temperature is consistently higher than that, those tires very quickly leave their safe zone.

A quick lap around the Michelin testing course in a car fitted with winter tires proved the point well. On a day that hovered around 15 degrees, driving on winter tires felt as much like driving on ice as all-seasons do in the winter months. The rubber lost much of its grip, and cornering and braking became much more laborious.

MICHELIN PREMIER LTX

Class and category: All-season touring

Sizes: 30 sizes from 16” to 22” fitments (plus 30 more sizes available for cars/minivans in Premier A/S from 15” to 18” fitments — plus 12 more 15” to 17” fitments arriving this year)

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